The Process - Lesson 5

This session is going to be Q & A. We’re going to field some questions from the studio audience. The hope here is that by answering these questions, it colors in the picture for you a little bit more based on the content that’s already been shared.

Student: You started by talking about your church. It’s a large multi-site church which can handle the complexity of these different steps that you’ve covered. Pretend you’re a pastor of a church of 100. What would you do with all this process? Would you simplify it? How would you simplify it?

Pastor Ferris: Good question. I think the process itself is simple. I think it’s multi-site church that’s complex. When you think about the process of selecting elders, you think about collecting names. It doesn’t matter what size your congregation is, you can certainly create a list of names of potential elders. I’ll point out before I continue on here even, we have multiple church campuses, and they’re all different sizes. We have some very large campuses, some small to medium-sized campuses. We live this every day. Collecting names, anyone can do that.

Then you are doing an initial screening on the name. You’re trying to figure out: is this person an active, healthy member of our church? You’re looking at a variety of behaviors there. Anybody can do that. That’s simple.

Then you’re having an initial conversation with the person to see if they’re interested in the discerning, engaging in the discerning process of potentially becoming an elder. Anybody can do that.

Then you have a second conversation where you’re digging in a little bit more. We do an interview with our entire elder team. Anyone can do that.

Then we put the names out for public consideration. Any church of any size can do that.

Then we train our elders.

I think if I was a pastor, let’s say I was pastoring a church of 150, 200 people, the specifics of what we do in the first conversation, in the second conversation, and then have an interview, I might conflate some of those. But what’s actually happening in that first conversation, in the second conversation, and the interview, I think the things that happen in those are important; but I wouldn’t say they all have to be separated out as different steps. I think the framework is simple. I think anybody can employ the framework, regardless of size of the church.

Student: I have a question on the order in which you do things, that you have selecting first and then training second. How can you select someone that you haven’t trained?

Pastor Ferris: Good question. We think of it in terms of qualified and equipped. If we’re selecting someone, we want to make sure that we’re paying attention to the Scriptures, because an oversight role in God’s church is incredibly important. These are not things to be taken lightly. We are in the selection process trying to determine, as best we can, is the person that we’re considering bringing on the elder team, are they a biblically qualified elder? In other words, do they meet all of the requirements that the Scriptures indicate for actually serving in that role? Our selection process is about being qualified.

The training process is about the specific things that we’re going to be asking our elders to do in the role. We separate qualified and training.

Student: My question has to do with the process of vetting and selecting potential elders. How do you handle it when you realize that someone does not meet the qualifications? 

Pastor Ferris: Great question. Humbly, gently, and with clarity. As we’re going through the process, if we start to realize that there’s something about the person or the person’s life that makes us apprehensive to put them on the elder team, we will share that with the person in a very loving way.

I’ll make up a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say as we’re having these conversations, as we start digging in, we realize this is a good person. They’re serving in the church. The way they handle their material resources seems to indicate that they have kingdom orientation, that they’re giving generously to the work of the church. You’re looking at all of these behaviors, and you’re saying this person in a lot of ways is a good example to the rest of the flock. You look at the scriptural qualifications, and you’re saying they seem to be meeting all of the bars to be qualified as an elder. But as we’re talking with them, we realize that there is some dissonance or some conflict in their marriage, where the husband and the wife are not on the same page with some things. It starts to emerge in the conversations. That would be a hypothetical reason that we would say, “I don’t think this year is the year to bring them on. Let’s work on the marriage.” This could be a person a year from now or two years from now, this marriage might be strong enough to serve in an elder role.

Another one might be that as we start asking very specific questions about their spiritual disciplines, their prayer life, their Bible study life, we realize this person really needs to do some work in terms of their prayer life, having an effective thriving prayer life because our elders pray a lot. We might say, “Here’s something to work on. We’re going to help you. We’re going to disciple you and help you develop your prayer life. It doesn’t mean that you can never be an elder; but for now, we’re going to hit the pause button and stop this process and consider you for future years.”

Student: In your second lesson, you talked about your own church as a case study to give us some context for where you’re coming from. We got to wondering about a pastor of a small church that doesn’t have a leadership structure. I know you have some smaller churches that are part of your network. How do you help people make the transition to a biblical leadership structure, even in a small church?

Pastor Ferris: Good question. We do have campuses of various sizes. I’ll take the example of when we are revitalizing a struggling congregation. In our context, if there’s a church that’s struggling and dwindling, they might ask to be adopted by our church and become a campus of our church. When we send a pastoral staff into that location (there’s a campus pastor) one of the jobs of the campus pastor is to start looking at that group of people and ask the question, “Are there any people in this current congregation that I can start identifying as a potential elder?” If the answer is “No,” or “I don’t know yet,” then you go slow. This is not the kind of thing where you just put warm bodies in spots. The Scriptures tell us very clearly that this is an incredibly important role in the life of a local church. We don’t just put warm bodies in spots for the sake of saying we have people functioning in that role. Better to have nobody yet and start to disciple people and train people. Over a period of time, you will have qualified people if you’re making disciples, but we don’t want to just start reaching and grasping and hoping that somebody is good for a role when we don’t actually know.

Student: It occurs to me that if you were like the single future elder in the church, all the training might be a little too much, but you train all of your new elders from all of your congregations at the same time. No new elders by himself in the training process.

Pastor Ferris: Correct. That’s one of the advantages of multi-site is you’re gathering people. There’s collective learning from a lot of voices and a lot of life experiences.

The other thing I would say here on this question is to remind ourselves that pastors are elders. Biblically speaking, it’s kind of the same function. When we’re talking about like pastoral teams and elder teams, we’re making a bit of a distinction that I’m not sure the Bible always makes. It’s a matter of role and how you’re deploying people and what you’re asking them to do in your specific church context. But it’s never true that if a church has a pastor that they don’t have an elder. Pastors are elders.

Student: Your comment reminded me that I was wondering how you use the word “pastor.” At what level of authority does a “pastor” have in your church?

Pastor Ferris: Great question. We use the word “pastor” as a descriptor for someone who is called to that oversight work. The question is, “How do you know when a pastor is in the room?” This is one of the things we always ask, “How do you know when a pastor is in the room?” Everybody has answers to that. My answer always is, you just know.

Let’s say we have someone new coming on staff. I’m trying to think of a recent scenario. We had a recent scenario where someone was coming on staff to oversee elementary ministry for one of our campuses. The question is, “Is this person a pastor?” Well, you’re asking two questions at the same time: 

• Is the function pastoral?
• Is the person a pastor?

It sounds like a nuanced thing or even an overly complicated way to think about it. But there are times where we have people on staff where they will tell us,” I do not feel called to be a pastor, but I want to oversee this thing.” It becomes—I don’t want to say it’s a word game—but there are times where we will say, “This person is overseeing this portion of a ministry, but they’re not a pastor. We’ll call them a director.” We’re trying to honor the sense of what they’re called to do, versus a pastor who wants to be trained biblically and trained theologically and have oversight. They want to perform weddings and funerals and preach and do all of these things; where you might have someone who says, “I just want to oversee these programs for kids. I don’t necessarily feel called to do any of those other things.” We just do our best to try to honor the scriptural categories without playing unnecessary word games. I don’t know if that answers your question well, but that’s how we do it.

Student: In the podcast, Pastor Jim referred to “servant leadership.” He said, in one experience he had, the person said, “You’re the servant, I’m the leader.” Can you give us a biblical and a healthy definition of what “servant leadership” really is?

Pastor Ferris: That’s a good question. Servant leadership. I don’t really understand leadership without that word in front of it. In the context of church, if we’re following the way of Jesus, leaders are by definition “servants.” I think of my pastoral role as serving our staff. I think of my pastoral role as serving our congregation members. I think of the role that our elders play as serving the church, serving the health of the church. We’re all serving Jesus, the chief shepherd. We’re all following Jesus and serving leadership.

If you think of it in terms of spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts are given to us for the sake of others. Whatever spiritual gifts God has given us, they’re given to us, but they’re not for us. They’re for serving other people in love. Nothing about spiritual gifts, which I would consider leadership a spiritual gift, nothing about leadership makes sense unless you recognize that God gave you those gifts to serve one another—in love—for the sake of the glory of God, for the good of his church, to honor Jesus. I have no category for leadership that’s not servant leadership.

Student: How would a potential elder understand the job description and what an elder is, just so that they would even have the ability to decide whether or not they’d want to do it in the beginning of the process?

Pastor Ferris: That’s a great question. If we walk through the steps of the process, collect names, do an initial screening, and then there’s an initial conversation. In that initial conversation, it is either a campus pastor or an existing elder who’s having this initial conversation with the potential elder. In that initial conversation, which is somewhat informal, the question being asked to this person is, “Would you be interested in going through the discerning process of potentially joining the elder team?” One of the things that happens in that initial conversation is, “Let me describe to you exactly what it’s like to be an elder in our church, so that you have some functional knowledge of what you’re even considering.” It happens in that initial conversation.

Student: In session three, we talked about elders and trustees or deacons. What would be the specific things you’re looking for in classifying someone as an elder versus a trustee or deacon? 

Pastor Ferris: That’s a great question. I can’t beat the drum on this one enough. The New Testament of our Bibles give us clear qualifications for what we’re looking for in elders and what we’re looking for in deacons. If you actually went through those texts and laid out the qualifications for someone serving in the role of elder and someone serving in the role of deacon, what you start to notice is there’s a lot of similarity, except when it comes to being an elder some of the bars on those particular qualities are raised a little bit. I think we do our churches a disservice when we don’t take those Scriptures seriously. When we are looking for someone to serve in the role of elder, we’re looking at those Scriptures very closely; and we’re asking questions to try to discern, “Does this person meet this qualification?” I think the most important thing to remember is when you’re looking at the scriptural qualifications for elders and deacons in the New Testament, that when you’re talking about the character of the person, almost all of those qualifications are the same.

The real big difference between a biblically qualified deacon and a biblically qualified elder is that elders need to be competent teachers of the Word; and they need to be able to refute doctrinal error, where that is not a particular requirement of someone serving in a deacon role.

Student: When you’re going through the vetting or selection process, what are some of the skill sets you look for for people that would be qualified as trustees or deacons?

Pastor Ferris: That’s a good question, too. The process that we’ve walked through is specific to us vetting and selecting and training elders; but we also reference the fact that we have a trustee team, which in a lot of churches is called a deacon team. That team is comprised of people who are both biblically qualified according to the New Testament to serve in a deacon role, and also they have competencies or skill sets that we find valuable to the overall life of the church. For example, we would want people that have accounting expertise or legal expertise, or maybe even have facility management expertise, all of the things about protecting the financial health of the church. We need people on our trustee team who are conversant in these matters. Imagine if you’re trying to set an annual budget for a very complex organization, and people on the trustee team aren’t even functional with financial spreadsheets. That would be a bit of a nightmare. There are competencies and skill sets that we look for very specifically when we’re building our trustee team.

Student: Not just in the third lesson, but in most of the lessons you refer to having elder couples, because that’s how you do things. We got to wondering about single people. Do you have single people who are elders? Logistically, how does it work out that way?

Pastor Ferris: Yes, we would have single elders in our church. Once again, that’s the exegetical work of what does it mean when it says “a husband of but one wife.” Does that text mean that the person has to be married? We’ve drawn the conclusion that the answer is no. We have had elders in our church who are single men. It functionally doesn’t make a big difference, except there are times where that single person is not the best choice as the elder who’s going to step in and help with a marriage counseling situation or to resolve some conflict between a man and a woman. All it really functionally means is that every once in a while you run into a scenario where that’s not the best person to deploy for a specific situation.

Student: A follow-up question: Could you give us the reverse of that question? When is it advantageous to have an elder who’s single?

Pastor Ferris: Yeah, if I was trying to think of scenarios, it would most often be when you’re dealing with someone in the church who is also a single adult, and they might resonate more or connect more with an unmarried elder. If they’re dealing with a particular situation that has to do with the fact that they’re a single adult; then sometimes if people are kind of in the same life situation, they just say, “I understand where you’re coming from.” There’s a little bit more of a relational connection there, and so that would be a helpful scenario.

Student: In lesson four, you talk about the vetting process where you have initial conversations with people that might be considered for elders. What specific things do you include in those conversations? What kind of answers are you looking for? Do they include things like their current church involvement or what they’re doing currently doing in the church as one aspect of that? Or another aspect might be their individual life with their Bible reading or prayer life, things like that, or maybe even their work occupation. Would they be available to come to the meetings and to be involved, or are they out of town all the time? Just practical things like that. What kinds of things do you include in those conversations, and what kind of answers are you looking for?

Pastor Ferris: Yeah, that’s a very helpful question and very intuitive because one of the things we do try to discern in the process is their workload outside of the church. If someone’s an airline pilot, for example, and they are rarely in town, they can’t function in the role of elder. They’re not going to be able to come to the meetings. They’re going to be unavailable for prayer. There are times during the process we do ask about their workload and their travel and how often they’re available because that’s a very important thing to consider.

In that initial conversation, so if we say, “All right, we’ve collected names; we’ve done some initial screening; and now I’m having this initial conversation with someone, which is somewhat informal.” Let’s say I take someone out for a cup of coffee and I say, “Hey, your name came up as a potential candidate to serve as an elder in our church.” They’re often surprised; and then they ask, “Well, how did that happen?” You’re having this conversation. Then part of that conversation is, “Based on the database, we did a little digging. It looks like you are in a community group—tell me about your community group. It looks like you serve in.” I’m making stuff up… “Student ministries. Tell me about serving in student ministries. What do you do? What’s that like?” You’re just starting to try to get a clearer picture of who this person is and how they’re engaged in the life of the church. You’re asking them about their work so that you can determine whether or not they’re going to be available to function in the role.

You’re also being very clear that you’re asking them to engage in the process, a discerning process, which is on both sides. We ask them to take a week or two and prayerfully consider, if they’re married with their spouse, do they want to go through this process? It does happen sometimes that they come back and say, “No, we just don’t feel called to it. We don’t feel like the Lord’s pleasure is in it.” Whatever it is, they can self-select out; and that happens from time to time. Another part of the conversation is describing the role to them informally. Those are the kinds of things we’re looking for. Once again, this is the first conversation. There’s a second conversation where you know that you’re going to start drilling down into some specific things. Then there’s also an interview. This first conversation is really the beginning. You are trying to just get a better sense of who this person is.

Student: As you have subsequent conversations and then also the different parts of the process, can you give an example of somebody that would self-select out maybe further along in the process or something that might come up that would be a red flag to you that they are ready in some areas, but not necessarily ready in other areas that you come across?

Pastor Ferris: Yeah. It definitely happens that people select out; they get a portion of the way into the process. As they’re also asking questions from their side of things, if they start to get a really clear understanding of the role and the time commitment and how it functions, it’s not often, but it’s also not incredibly rare that someone would come to us and say, “My wife and I have been talking about this based on our life stage and what our kids are currently involved in and my work responsibilities. We don’t think we can give ourselves fully to this, understanding the time commitments involved.” They would select out.

It does also happen sometimes that potential candidates know things about their own life that we don’t know yet. They’re very honest about it. They say, “I’m just going to be really honest, I don’t feel like I have—my prayer life is a mess, or I’ve been neglecting reading the Word. I’m really flattered that you guys see something in me, but I just want to be honest with you. You’re not seeing the full me. I would rather work on this part of my life.” Sometimes you have those kinds of conversations, which I find incredibly helpful in terms of making disciples.

Then there are times where we’re going through the process, and things start to emerge where you’re starting to ask more clarifying questions. You start to notice an area of their life that might bring you some concern. You start asking some more follow-up questions about that area of their life. As you’re doing that, everybody starts to realize, “Oh, this is going to be a no.” It is almost always true that when you’re doing those kinds of things, both parties become aware. If the same Spirit that lives in me is the same Spirit that lives in you, then it’s often that both sides of that process are being communicated to by the Spirit. You realize, “We need to press the pause button on this.” It’s not a shock to anybody.

Student: Do you ever have people that go partway through the process, and determine at that time that it’s not the best for them; and then come back later, at a better time in their life, or when they’ve thought about things more, and they’ve been able to engage at that point at another time?

Pastor Ferris: Yes. We’ve had people say things like, “My kids are juniors and seniors in high school, and we are up to our eyeballs in all of our kids’ stuff. We can’t imagine a scenario where you could give time to this right now, but please keep us on your list and come back to us in a year and ask again.” Then you have to decide, are they just stalling? They really don’t want to do it, but they don’t want to fully say they don’t want to do it. Or is it a genuine, “No. Right now it’s a no, but genuinely yes in the future.” That definitely comes up from time to time.

Student: I have a question regarding the vetting process as well. In the vetting process, what benchmarks are you looking for in regards to biblical literacy, understanding, knowledge?

Pastor Ferris: Yeah. Once again, back to the scriptural qualifications, elders need to be able to teach. They also need to be able to sniff out bad doctrine. If I just use those two general things, we’re not looking for someone that is a professional public speaker. They don’t need to be able to stand up in our church and preach a sermon to hundreds of people.

We do expect that they’re able to sit down with another individual, open the Scriptures and explain things. We would be looking for someone that can clearly articulate the basics of the gospel message. Someone that is, you use the word “biblically literate,” someone that has obviously been a student of the Word, been reading the Bible for a long time, and could sit down with any newer believer or anyone in the congregation and be completely conversant about what’s the Old Testament, what’s the New Testament, what did Jesus teach, what’s the Sermon on the Mount, where to find things in the Bible. We’re looking for people that know the Word.

We’re not looking for people who are PhDs. We’re not looking for people who have memorized systematic theologies; but we are taking the scriptural qualifications seriously and considering the question, “Is this person somebody that can teach the basics of Christianity?” And also have a sense when things are sliding into heresy. Those are the benchmarks we’re looking for. Once again, these are not people that have to be able to stand on a stage and preach. That’s a different thing. Public speaking skills are different than being able to sit down with somebody and explain the Scriptures.

Student: These might be just simpler questions that I’m genuinely curious to: Do you have an age cut off? Does a person have to be a certain years old in order to be considered an elder?

Pastor Ferris: What a wonderful question. We do not have a specific chronological age, but there’s a general assumption that someone—my understanding of the biblical qualifications of an elder, is there is a general assumption of a level of maturity. We do consider how long has this person been a believer. Now I fully understand that in the New Testament, that answer might’ve been a more condensed amount of time. But when you have in our church, which is very large, you have a larger pool of selecting people. You have the benefit of someone that’s been walking with the Lord for five years. and you’re looking at them; and you’re saying, “They’ve been walking with the Lord for five years. That seems to be enough time to be able to meet the qualifications, to demonstrate that you’re qualified to be an elder.” I have that person that’s been walking with the Lord for five years, and I have another person who’s been walking with the Lord for 15 years. I’m probably going with the person that has more track record of faithfulness and character and fruit bearing life. We do not have a specific chronological age.

Student: Do you have any disqualifying prior moral failings, something that’s happened in somebody’s life? How do you think through that? Whether it’s before Jesus and then after Jesus, or levels of maturity? How do you handle major moral failings in someone’s life?

Pastor Ferris: Yes. Great question. You already mentioned in your question, one of the things you would consider, which is, let’s say 15 years ago, somebody cheated on their spouse. One of the questions is, “Was this before they came to saving faith in Jesus, before they surrendered their life to Jesus as Savior and King? Was this their living in the world days, and they have come to fully repent of that lifestyle, and they’re a new creation in Christ?” That would be one consideration. Or you sometimes have scenarios where someone says, “No, honestly, I was a Christian when that happened.” You’re using wisdom and discernment. You’re asking questions like, “Is this person fully repentant?” You’re asking all kinds of questions about the scenario. What kind of process did they go through? You’re asking questions about their current relationship with their spouse.

Let’s say someone cheated on their spouse. Are they still together? Did they reconcile? Did they divorce? What were the specifics of the divorce? Who filed for the divorce? You have to ask so many questions to try to discern what really happened, and what’s really going on. Has this person continued to move in a kingdom direction since that time? I would say the number one thing we contemplate is what is the span of time between that incident and being considered for an elder. If we find out this was only two and a half years ago, now we stop. We need enough time. I can’t say we know exactly specifically what that amount of time is, but we need to feel comfortable that there’s been enough time between that past moral failing and present day that there has been a demonstrated faithfulness to Jesus since then. A repentant spirit, continuing to be sanctified by God’s spirit, a maturity, the ability to look at their life and see the fruit of their life, good fruit from their life. I can’t tell you how long that period of time is, but we often find ourselves asking, “Is there enough distance between then and now?”

Student: Do you consider poverty level?

Pastor Ferris: No.

Student: So if a person is not very financially successful, they still might qualify to be an elder for a term of service.

Pastor Ferris: Yeah. If you go back to the scriptural qualifications, they need to have been able to demonstrate that they manage their household well. How can you manage God’s household if you can’t manage your own household? You look for managing their household well, but someone could manage their household well and not have a high paying job, so could technically be living at poverty level. It has nothing to do with whether or not they’re faithful managers of their family and their household. We do not consider socioeconomic status as a make-or-break thing in the elder process. 

Student: How important is the public image of your elders?

Pastor Ferris: Reputation is important. I always say you can’t control your reputation, but you can control your character. What I mean when I say that is, people are going to say what people are going to say. Also true, if you are a person of character, you tend to have a good public reputation. The person’s reputation at work, the person’s reputation in the community, the person’s reputation in the congregation is a big deal. I don’t think that you can’t, if someone has a bad reputation of being divisive or difficult to work with, and you’re hearing multiple people say it, I don’t think that multiple people are just making that up. You would have to start saying, “I think there’s a conspiracy going on where all of these people are getting together to try to take this person down.” I don’t think that happens very often in the context of a local church. Of course, you’re considering reputation.

Student: You didn’t mention this in your talk, but do you require outside recommendations? I know some churches will say, “I need a recommendation from his boss at work,” or “I need a recommendation from his neighbor.” Do you do that at all? Or is everything, in a sense, the testing internal to the church?

Pastor Ferris: Yeah, I would say it’s internal. It’s part of the way we do it. I wouldn’t say it’s right or wrong, but we’re having so many conversations along the way and in the interview process. Of course, while we’re doing this process, we’re asking around. If I’m a campus pastor, and I’m considering someone to serve as an elder at my campus, I might go to a few people that I know have partnered with this person in a ministry department or has known the person for a long time and say, “You’ve known this person for a long time” or “You work with them, right? Tell me about them at work,” or “Tell me about what it’s like working with them in this ministry area of our church.” We do it a bit more informally. I would say, yes, we’re doing it, but no, we don’t use like official recommendation letters or anything formally written. 

Student: Basically, you have elders nominating future elders. I know that some people would say that if an elder board goes bad, they just nominate other elders that’ll make it go worse. It doesn’t sound to me like you allow the congregation to submit names—

Pastor Ferris: Correct.

Student: for future elders, but how do you keep, maybe not in your church, but in another church, how do you keep an elder board that’s going bad of going worse because of who they keep nominating?

Pastor Ferris: Right. Yeah. I would say if it is restricted only to current elders nominating future potential elders, I think you have a problem for that reason. You have a potential problem. The assumption underlying your question is you have bad elders who are just going to nominate more bad elders, right? My hope would be that that wouldn’t be the case; that if you take seriously the scriptural qualifications, and you really have an intentional process, you have good elders. The way we do it is, it’s not just our elders. In fact, they would be the smallest piece of that puzzle. We have about 120 staff members across our campuses. When we are asking all of them, “Who do you know?” “Who’s in your ministry areas?” When we’re doing that initial collecting names, we’re collecting these names from a lot of people on staff.

We do not push out to the entire congregation of thousands of people. Now, in a smaller context, it may not be a terrible idea. It seems like a terrible idea to us to send an email to 10,000 people and say, “Who do you think would be a good elder in our church?” We’re going to get so many names of people that may or may not be even worth vetting, so we keep it to staff. Sometimes even, I have to imagine that some of our campus pastors would ask some of our high-level lay leaders who do they know that might be considered. So once again, we do this relationally and more informally than we do with formal communications.

Student: I assume a person can’t nominate himself to be an elder.

Pastor Ferris: I guess I suppose they could. When people self-nominate, it makes me uncomfortable. I wonder what their motivation is. There’s a lack of humility there that is immediately off-putting. Someone, I guess, technically could, but the level of humility with which they ask the question. If someone ever came to me on a weekend after church services, “Hey pastor, I have a question for you: How does someone in our church become an elder or trustee?” And I sensed a level of humility or even a bit of—sometimes people ask questions because they’re exploring what they might sense is some kind of calling or leading by God. And if there’s a level of humility in the exploration, I’m okay with the conversation. If it is, “I served as an elder in my previous church, and how do I get on the elder team here?” My answer is probably, “Never,” because I’m immediately skeptical about their motivations.